What never would be
by LadyRavenwing
Summary: One shot, Fitz point of view set during his and Olivia s conversation in the season 5 finale.
**What never would be**

 **Disclaimer: Obviously, none of these characters are mine. Their thoughts, however, are.**

 **Author´s note: Just a little one shot, Fitz´ thoughts during that one meeting with Olivia in the Oval Office in season 5, episode 21. I had a feeling there was a whole lot going through his mind…**

So many things had changed over the years. So many emotions they had been through, together and seperately. This office had seen a number of them and yet he was aware that their fights and laughter, their kisses and shouts, their honesties and lies were only a tiny fraction of the oddities these walls had witnessed through history. And yet, there were moments when all the Roosevelts and Kennedies paled into the faint ghosts of past incumbants, banishing their faint historic presence and fading against the very real presence that was her. The way she had stepped into this office so many times, in anger or excitement had often seemed like the few real things in his life and when she showed up again, surprisingly, suddenly, it was just like that. The very real storm of her personality sweeping in and demanding attention.

Fitz didn´t know what he had expected. It had been a day with so many ups and downs, so many revelations and truths, that he had inwardly rebelled against the thought of even facing her, his voice sounding unbearably chipper when he asked her to sit down, in almost aggressive, mocking defiance. Finding those medical records, being faced with her secret had threatened to pull the ground from beneath his feet. The strangest of sensations while his mind had insisted that she did not hold that power over him any more. Had insisted that she had left his life long ago and that whatever she had done had already been done and could not hurt him any more. But it had hurt. So much that he had felt the overpoweing need to run from it all.

And then Mellie. The candidate now and during her little speech he had been able to see past it all, seeing her ambition, the driving force behind what she was doing, wondering whether she really believed in all she said. Mellie had always had a feel for the dramatic. And there had been times when, like a child, he had felt the urge to lash back, just because he couldn´t stand her accusations. Not today. When she had unloaded her frustrations on him, partly – no doubt – born from the anticipation and hunger for the office he held, he had found himself unable to feel anything. Her words sliding off him like water, not affecting him and while she talked he realised this was because he felt numb after what he had learned earlier that day. While she spat her accusations at him, all he had been able to think about was that little raging tormented flame in his heart and mind repeating one thing over and over and over again: Olivia had beenpregnant with his child. Their child. And she had never told him.

But word after word this flame had flickered and died. His impassiveness when he listened to his ex-wife´s rant had started another little thought, one that was very rare indeed: Mellie, he had suddenly thought, had a point. Not about the speech, not about all the narcisicm that she should better learn quickly was a quintessential and unavoidable part of presidential campaigning anyways, but about her underlying accusation. That it was all about him. That he was so eager to get his message out that he had not heeded her. And it had turned Fitz´ thoughts to Olivia. His rage, his hurt slowly changing into something far more painful.

Had he been too focused on himself?

Had he really been caging her? He had never intended to, but had he been simply too little aware of the fact that Olivia Pope was a free spirit who would only ever see a first lady´s role as a prison?

Had he, in his desire to keep her close, driven her away?

His attempts to returnt his full attention to other matters that day had been futile and he half wished that his anger was still there. That he could just despise her for not telling him. For not putting enough effort into their relationship to deem it necessary to talk about this with him. But his anger had faded and there was no way of getting it back from the far more destructive feelings of guilt and disappointment in himself.

And then she had walked into his office. Like she used to. Confidently. Professionally. A strong, proud, confident woman who knew her place in the world and who knew her value in it. Who knew where she was and where she wanted to go…or was she? When she refused to sit down he could see something in her eyes and that was maybe hardest of all. A mix of mistrust in herself and him. Like she was wondering what his motives were for asking her to sit and maybe talk a bit. But also as if she were insecure about her own reactions towards him. It was a glimmer, the faintest, of old pains, memories of happier times in this very office and seeing it mirrored in her eyes even if ever so briefly, gave him a new piercing feeling in his chest. And yet here he was, trying to disguise his own hurt in semi-mocking one liners.

She sat down, her body language carefully guarded, all about her breathing the image of the fixer and campain manager, a woman possessing power and poise beyond her years, but her eyes telling him she had seen an overly large share of life´s dark and twisted sides as well. And it made him wonder how much he had contributed to it. She had walked out of his life and took their dreams with him. Vermont. A few kids…she had ogne and ended those dreams for good. How desperate, how hopeless must she have been about what they had once been.

He sighed inwardly and when she looked at him, her eyes confident and yet with that slightly insecure question in her gaze, her body language ever so slightly tense and ready to bolt and run, just perching on the edge of the sofa instead of fully relaxing, there was one thought appearing in his mind: she had left. She had packed her things and left and decided that she could not bear the thought of bearing their child. She had given up on their dreams, naive as they might have been and she had never shared with him that she had closed the door on their past so tightly, so determinedly.

Looking at her, talking about the campaign, about picking VPs seemed trivial, like a farce almost. He wondered if his eyes were betraying him, if the way he looked at her were giving away what he had seen in that thin folder Abby had left on that table.

 _You drove her away,_ he thought to himself. _You drove her away by putting her in a cage. By taking her for granted. By ignoring what had changed between the two of you and that never ever before had there been a feeling that either of them had been in a superior position._ Neither of them was equiped for the role of the supporter alone. None of them would ever be content to just be pretty decoration and even though he had never demanded that of her…he had just…not listened. Not just to her word. She had not listened to her eyes. To her body language. To her silences. To how she had been walking around, dutifully shaking hands and listening to the small talk of governours´ wives and senators while the White House staff were asking her to pick the right table spoons for the upcoming state dinner. He had not listened to her.

For a moment, for just a moment when he apologised for her, during his heartfelt string of „I´m sorry", she was who she had been to him. For just a moment her farce of self confidence and professionalism crumbled, revealing the eyes of the woman who had not been afraid to show her weaknesses in front of him in their most intimate and private of moments. What had happened? He had not listened and the intimacy had died. She had picked its pieces and walked away.

He could see the smallest of frowns on her face when he apologised. It made him wonder, ever so briefly, if their child would have inherited that frown. In his mind he could picture it clearly. The small face of a girl with her frown and eyes. A bundle of stubbornness and loveliness doing her first steps in the Oval, stumbling over the rug and using the side of the Resolute Desk to pull herself up before turning to look at him with a goofy three-toothed toddler´s smile. A strange idea of course, since she would not quite have grown fast enough to be able to learn to walk in here. That would have come later, after his presidency. Maybe up in Vermont…

Her silence stretched for long seconds. And the longer it lasted, the more he felt the image of the little girl fading in his mind. _Don´t hurt yourself any more,_ he told himself. _She never existed. And never will._ And the anger was gone and all he could feel was sadness. What kind of man had he been to not listen to her more closely? What kind of man took a woman like her for granted?

I support your choice, Liv." The words were out, suddenly, and he had not even seen them coming, had maybe just uttered them because she had gotten to her feet, and he had dared to venture one last, desperate attempt to reach out to her. To make her understand his apology was heart felt, that no matter what had happened between them, he did not have hard feelings. But the way she looked at him made him wonder whether not that, too, was a brazen thing to say. She broke eye contact, something she seldomly ever did yet had done several times since she had entered the room and for just an instant she looked so vulnerable it nearly broke his heart. „Not that you needed it." No words needed. They were not talking about trivial things like vice presidents and they both knew it. They hadn´t talked about running mates in this conversaiton at all.

„Hm." Her smile, an attempt at lightheartedness and pretending that this conversaiton wasn´t about the child that never was, was faint and fake and vulnerable. And she just stood there for seconds it seemed, before leaving, her „Thank you" so light hearted it obviously was not. And when she closed the door to the Oval Office it was to him as if she closed the door on this converation in a totally different way. For whatever came now he knew they would never speak of it again. There was no way, they could be any more blunt.

He heard the soft click of the door. She had not slammed it, but closed it slowly softly, not much noise at all, as if not to disturb his thoughts. His grief. And the ghost of the little girl with the small frown and the even broader smile lingered for another moment, then faded.

Faded.

Was gone.


End file.
